audberry

[audberry]

My Sea

My body is poetry, it curves, twists, ebbs and flows with an inner heat, saturated with gasoline.

Light me up, in a second I’d be flames, destroying everything, self immolation, a form of peaceful protestation.

I put myself out here about as smoothly as a knife against your throat; try not to flinch it could end with us both in a cinch.

My body, is small, it takes up very little space, yet my thighs rub together like flint making flames.

Leaving third degree burns in place, I should be ashamed now, yet it is hard to hide it, so why fret what I can’t change?

I have scars darling, they lace across my legs, my ribs my wrists, they tell stories of long ago days.

Days, where my skin sparked and flecked with flames, I am a flame eater, the intricacy of the story, it didn’t destroy me.

I wear marks now as badges, as if to show you through shimmering white slashes that I am now made of steel.

I’m impervious to you, I’m poetry, I have words slashing through my veins, they flowed once, they are filled with flame.

Don’t make me spark, don’t trigger it up, just let me snuff it out, I’m all full now on it anyways.

Veins full of clots, lungs coughing out ink, I don’t need to bleed for you to see me in the deep.

So just stop here with your wondering stare, you don’t have to ask me, how the river came to be a sea.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Waterfall

Trying to share myself in small pieces, cutting bits of me off, so you won’t choke on it, yet my blood doesn’t flow easy, doesn’t cascade gently.

I struggle because I’m too much, it all pours out ravenously, I’m like a thirsting man longing for a drink during a drought, I don’t know how to temper myself.

I don’t know how to be pleasing, I just pour it out, on this paper in a gush, with a rush that sometimes repulses the unwitting, unprepared to handle someone like me.

They say I’m “intense”, I never know, is that a compliment or an insult? Should I cringe at the remark or embrace it gladly, I can’t help it, my minds a waterfall.

Don’t stand too close, you might find yourself drowning with me, we could cascade together into this deep, but you have to be brave darling, are you ready to embrace me?

~Audberry~

[audberry]

The Addict

My skin is crawling, itching with this secret addiction, fingers twitching, if I don’t share it the world won’t know that I’m struggling.

To reach out to grasp for you again, it is pitiful really how I’m never over you, never wanting to move on from the curve of your lips.

Still dreaming of the tilt of your chin, darling I’m bad at moving on, bad at forgetting, I have an addiction, it wears your face.

Sometimes speckled in scruff, flecked with hints of gray, creases beside your eyes I’d like to number, to kiss, every inch.

You are impervious to my grasping, yet I reach anyways toward the impenetrable shield of you, with your maturity, with your grace.

Darling I’m addicted to you, an addiction I can’t shake, when you go away I get the shakes, I just want to reach out.

I want to touch you, make you smile, claim you as my own, could you be only mine, with those deep green eyes, that stir a fire in me?

I would spend my life trying to make your burden lighter, make you smile, darling you are an addiction to me, yet one I don’t want to even try to shake!

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Viking Blood

I’m struggling to the surface, caught up in this clear water, it ripples placidly around my body, a shimmering dance in bright light, hiding the obscenity of this fight.

I scowl at myself, for letting my feelings sneak up again, betray me again, lie on my sleeve again; I should never have let the anvil of my heart pull me down again.

But it got filled heavy, to the brim with this old dead weight, a weight I fight like hell to shake, yet I’ve learned over time, the more I struggle, kick, scream the deeper it drags me in.

I’m a warrior, so I just allow myself now to float upward, the chained heart sinking below me, thinking to myself, this must secretly be a blessing, staring through the clear.

The water masking all my tears, I’m a warrior, you can’t see me cry, I’ve got Viking blood in me somewhere, if I were strong like my mother I’d kick these feelings ass.

I remind myself as I sink into the clear blue deep, at least my mind is at ease. I am facing now these feelings, acknowledging them as they drag me in.

Eventually I’ll catch up this chain, break it in two with inhuman strength, be free of the anvil of a heart that seems to be trying to fill up with you, I’ll let it drown.

I’m a warrior, I don’t need this heart, I stare at it analytically, I can study its corrosion, I can wait till the perfect moment, to tear it out, toss it away.

Use up my Viking strength, embrace the mother in me, the one that knows when it is time, to kick my own ass and turn away. I don’t need this heart.

It never has done much for me anyway, I think this as I stare through the clear deep, the faces of long dead lovers, ones who lost their fight, they stare back at me.

I promise myself, I’m not like them, I may be a lover but somewhere deep, I have this Viking blood, I’ll channel the fire of my mother, I’ll free myself from this deep, I’ll be a fighter.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Caramel

I dream of your mouth like I do of caramel, as something that isn’t good for me, but that tastes oh so sweet. Something I can’t have, probably never again, but long for anyway. You once pressed your mouth hard on mine as if to devour me, I shivered inwardly from a compulsion to catch you up, maybe with a revulsion, knowing something this sweet couldn’t be good for me.

Caressing the tongue against the roof of my mouth in suspense, hoping for something beyond hope. Wishing for something that could never be. Yet darling you were like caramel to me, sticking to my teeth, licking hard against them trying to peel it away, yet savoring the very taste. You still haunt my dreams, and it seems I will never get away. Not from your taste.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Collapse

Collapse in your arms again, waiting like the small sofa left me by a great grandma long gone, who smelled of werthers caramels and loose powder, cheeks always crinkled like parchment waiting for a warm kiss.

Collapsing into you, and wanting you to envelope me tight like the millions of letters I sealed but never sent, your eyes twinkle in my mind and I’m in an inward chaos that wraps around the cosmos.

I collapse with a willfulness of one whose hands are ready to be laid empty before you. Take these nails from my hands, they’re clasping a bit too tightly, let you hold me darling, in your strength I feel safe.

I will collapse into you, but darling don’t take that as me being weak, for it takes a special strength to lay myself bare and be vulnerable to you! So please fold around me and share with me your hidden strength.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Endless

There is this endless chasm, of space and time, where in infinity I laid bare beside you, our bodies intertwined.

You spoke to me, of dreams, books, thoughts, the little things that make up some of everything, our minds conveying secrets.

Sometimes I wish I had just said so often what you’d wanted to hear, what seemed right at the time, sometimes I don’t remember.

Everyone has there own truth and mine got lost somewhere, in the midst of struggles and lies, you became so fragile.

Before as we cascaded over each other and around each other, you had seemed so strong, and I’d have embraced your presence as endless.

Yet here I Am, in the midst of an endless ending, that I don’t understand, that I can’t stop, there isn’t a moment for a mic drop.

I just wanted to say, that there were so many seconds I can’t get back, can’t replace that all wear your face.

It was endless, yet the endless now came to an end and I’m scrambling with it, trying to understand how it could’ve changed.

Do you still see my impression crumpled on the bed resting noiselessly, head popping up in my light sleep to bid you goodbye?

I still see you, whittling away with a knife as easily as you did our love, peering at me from beyond dreams that don’t matter anymore.

Because there will always be a part of me, hung up on the endless, where a million dreams died, that is the end of our lie.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

I’m in confusion, the heart I had wedged so forcefully up my sleeve keeps slipping down.

It is caught between a sharp wire, being pulled from two different sides, pulled tighter and tighter till it spasms.

Till it bleeds.

I feel the circulation cutting off with a calm. The calm of one who analyzes.

Analyzed the dead.

I am someone who once had been dead but finds themselves strangely alive again.

Forced back to the living.

Yet these emotions are tugging and struggling. I have a desire to tuck myself deep below the surface of eternity.

As if in hiding I’d have peace.

I’d throw myself under the green water of the lake, it calls me promising only to calm me.

Calm me!

I could press my feet deep against the slimy bottom, pretend I’m a siren.

Sing a song you don’t understand.

The only desire I have is to pull you down and speak to you as the dead.

The dead is where our love lies.

Because the pulling, the struggling, it is a joke, really that life I had before is in ash.

We don’t live there anymore.

It is burned down gone in reality it can’t begin again, but still inwardly it struggles forward in dreams.

I see the house.

So maybe, if I keep struggling myself to bury it all under the water it could put out the flames of my memory.

Save the burned home.

So here I am hoping without hope that it could restore a house that has already burned down like so much shame.

Hush now brain.

I just want to tuck myself under that water, stay there until I feel the emptying of my head.

Stop staring off again.

I am tired of staring at the emblazoned memory of a burning house and wishing for a different end.

There is only the END.

Talking to your memory as if I could resuscitate the dead.

Yet it is too late.

We already reached an end.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

I feel myself rising and detonating I am full of sulfur, and the lava I feel ready to spew out of me is overwhelming, ready to burn everything up in its path.

Right now it is a toxic flow, I have to cut myself off, from everything because if I touch it, I’m going to break it, I see it, in my eyes, the angry burning of hate.

Why am I feeling so angry, seemingly at random? The days have built up and now I can’t breathe, not without my chest shivering and lip quivering.

You think I’m sad, I’m not, I’m empty except for the explosion of noxious toxic fumes ready to irrupt. Why do I feel so overcome by emotions, where am I?

They say love yourself, yet how is that possible when I’m struggling to even like me, the face in the mirror stares out not near hollow enough, I am angry.

[audberry]

Sealed

Resting lazily against your chaise lounge, feeling more comfortable in your space than my own.

Worrying what that says about me, worrying maybe underneath these fingernails there is a grit you can’t accept.

I cling hard darling, like the grout amidst tiles, I can hold pieces together, really you have to scrub like hell to get me out.

But I worry, here in this room that feels like you that I am growing too comfortable, in the grasp of arms.

More than once have I been discarded, homes becoming more like a hotel to pass through, moving 6 times in a year.

Yet darling I don’t want to flee from you, I worry, I am too comfortable in my loose fitting tank, lounging against your knee.

You fit me, almost too perfectly, the way your mouth folds over mine like an envelope over a letter.

I gasp when you slide your tongue against me to seal our affinity with a kiss, wrapping me up with all your love.

I fold and unfurl against you, every secret part of me revealed, I show you my soft underbelly, you lavish it with kisses.

You say I’m beautiful, even the parts of me knit together with scars and shame, you kiss the marks I myself hate.

I worry I’m too comfortable in this place of yours, I worry I’m too comfortable in your embrace and space.

You take my breath away and the eclipse you have created in my mind has replaced every other face.

Darling until you, I didn’t know what love was, until you embraced me I didn’t know what it meant to be held.

I dream in earthen tones, of you, of your wings and everywhere they take you, you’re my perfect serenity.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Diagnosis

I’ve written pages, hundreds even thousands, trying to explain what it feels like, to be invisible, to be caught up in a mason jar, by some giant thoughtless human, one who forgot to poke in breathing holes through the cellophane.

I know for many it doesn’t make sense, to feel so trapped, disconnected and set aside on a shelf to suffocate, suffocate in a world full of people, with a womb that you suspect of rotting inside you, I’m caught up in this jar, I feel alone.

Millions of faces passing by, glance beyond me, beyond my glass but don’t see me, I’m exhausted, I’m tied up by time, in a waiting game, waiting for someone by the name of Doctor to tell me what is and what isn’t wrong, yet knowing undoubtedly that something is...

Maybe not as bad as I fear, maybe worse, people keep telling the air in front of my face, without seeing me, to have faith, yet they can’t see, I’m caught up under this cellophane, it is suffocating me.

I keep swallowing, unsure, please tell me the diagnosis, so I can transition into a butterfly and tear through this film, so I can remember how to be strong, so I can face this and stop struggling with being afraid, I keep reassuring everyone it’ll be okay.

I wish the glass walls of my mason jar would reverberate it back at me, give me some comfort in this stifling silence, with faces surrounding me, yet not a single one seeing me, no answers given me, we just keep going day to day. ~Audberry~

[audberry]

Preying Wolf

The smell of salt on your skin, makes my tongue press hard against my teeth, I have the urge to bite you, taste the warm saltiness of you in between my lips.

They purse as if to kiss, I’m biting my lower lip in anticipation, I’d like to gobble you up, you cause my hips to sway, I feel I’m dancing; alone amidst a crowd.

Darling I need you near me, tender and soft, wet and hard, I can feel your warmth beside me, I’m like a wolf, I can smell you, I can taste you from afar.

Hold me tight, tie me up in ribbons, I have sharp teeth, so I’m sorry if I make you bleed, but darling you aroused the hunger in me, I want to feel you.

Taste tender flesh between my teeth, I’m preying for you, hunting for you, snatch me up, nibble me back, press my thighs hard in your fist, I’m hungry.

I’ll try not to treat you badly, but I’m sorry if I make you bleed, press me back, press me hard darling I’m hungry, I’ve learned from the wolf, the wolf in me.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Secret Places

I wanted to go somewhere that only we would know, yet the world is full of people who love to follow.

It is strange, I search in all the secret places where you whispered words of love, almost expecting to see you.

But nowhere could I find you, not tucked in the corners, not even in books we once long ago spoke of.

I just see your face, peering behind the lines, I hope when I look up you’ll still be there, with an absent minded stare.

Really it is strange how I continue to search, for the smell of you in these old clothes, looking through shadows.

We stood together by that lake, there our love fell down, I thought I’d find it again, tucked in the reeds of grass.

Maybe swimming with the crawdads, but it wasn’t there either. I guess it sunk down somewhere in the mud.

I had hoped to go somewhere only you and I would know. But many people tend to follow, they’re holding hands in our stead.

I ran fingers through the mud, searching for a remnant, a piece of glass in the sea, yet the lake feels like an ocean.

The lake that saw our love fall down, got torn and lost, discarded from its pedestal, I want to find that place.

The place only you and I would know, where no one else would go... but that place doesn’t exist anymore.

I guess the ocean that was a lake can take it all, secretly hold my tears from the last years of searching.

Searching for a place I could never find at all, a place that existed long before our fall, a place where love stood tall.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Sometimes I ask myself what I want in life?

But rarely can I reply.

But today, as the cool wind beats gently against my face, I think it is simply this.

The quiet.

The peace in my mind.

The outer body experience of not at all being considerate of my physical state.

To not worry.

Not take any heed for this body that so often falls short and betrays me.

To have faith that everything will be okay!

To believe that in my deepest recesses.

I wish everyday I could feel so clear.

So unconcerned by all the negativity constantly swirling around the ocean of my life.

Today I asked myself, what I wanted in life.

Today I had an answer.

It was peace.

It was quiet.

It was self love.

~Audberry~

[audberry]

rat patootie (bless my soul)

Yes, like in the movie Ratatouille, the recipe so good it makes the evil food critic cry tears of joy. 

I swear this stuff has magical properties but ANYWAY. I’m not about to be that person with the 8 paragraph personal essay before the recipe so here it is

4-6 cloves garlic 1 onion olive oil 1 28oz can crushed or petite diced tomatoes fresh basil and parsley. Like 1/3 of a cup each? 1 eggplant 1-2 zucchini 1-2 yellow squash 5-6 roma tomatoes salt and pepper

1. Get food. Tricky part: make sure the eggplant, zucchini, squash and tomatoes are all roughly the same thiccness.

I finally figured it out: for a 10″ cast iron pan, you want 8-10″ apiece of each kind of tube veggie.

2. chop veggies. This is a fun recipe to make if you like to stab things a lot. Slice the tube veggies as thinly as you can. I can reliably do about 1/8th inch.

3. Preheat oven to 350 and put your pan over medium heat. If you have dried herbes de provence, throw 1-2 tablespoons in the pan and let them toast until you can smell them. If not don’t worry about it.

I put in extra lavender just ‘cause I could.

4. Add 1-2 tablespoons olive oil and plenty of garlic. Never let some catfish tell you how much garlic is too much. Feel it in your heart.

Anyway let that saute for about 2 minutes.

5. Add onions and saute until translucent, about 8 minutes. 

6. Add the crushed tomatoes, half the parsley and basil, 1-2 tsp black pepper and a pinch of salt. Let that simmer for, I don’t know, 5-10 minutes?

7. While that’s happening, mix like ¼ cup of olive oil with another teaspoon of garlic, black pepper, salt, and the rest of the parsley and basil. Set that aside.

8. Turn off the stove burner and start putting the veggies in the pan. Don’t know if it matters but I usually alternate soft with hard, so I do eggplant-zucchini-tomato-yellow squash. 

Keep doing that

I usually do a ring of veggies around the outside of the pan and then fill in the center however works. Most versions of this recipe lay the veggies down on top of the sauce. I’ve always stuck them straight up and down in the pan. Is this better? Who knows, man.

Ratatouille ready to go in the oven

9. Bake for about an hour and 15 minutes. It’s done when the zucchini and squash in the center are fork tender.

10. Spoon the olive oil/herb/garlic sauce over the top while it’s bubbling hot

Ways to stretch it out: Ratatouille is awesome on top of pasta. I usually get 4 meals out of one pan like this. Also, you will have leftover tube veg. I buy frozen pizza crusts and throw the veggies on top with some pizza sauce or olive oil, seasonings, and some goat cheese crumbles or mozzarella.

Anyway, that’s my current “happy place” recipe. It’s never cost me more than $10 in raw materials to make (including fresh herbs and bourgie canned tomatoes!) and is always a crowd-pleaser.

Nom on that

[audberry]

What If

Strange to think about what it means to be feminine, is it wrapped up in the gap of thighs? In waists thin as a sheet of paper? Is it goals or anorexia? Is it an eating disorder or self discipline?

When everything you put in your u mouth should be counted and numbered, I’m recording macros and micros, as you taught me to. Yet it makes me feel like I’m stuck under a microscope. Like an insect to be blatantly observed.

Should my cheeks be gaunter? Should my hip bones jut when I lay down? Should I see my clavicles more pronounced? Hormone imbalances, I’m just too emotional, too wrapped up...

They call me conceited, yet I don’t appreciate the person staring back at me as a fumble this flesh around my midsection, you say it is just skin, yet I look down and all I see is fat. Glaringly the paleness of my own flesh looks back.

I am trying to learn this art of self love after years in an abusive relationship, where this body was never enough, never small enough, never skinny enough, I never looked like the countless women I’d see on your screens, your forgetting to erase the search history.

Blue flickering lights blind me, I feel ashamed of the person I was, the person you brought out of me, who didn’t trust, who delved, who cried themself to sleep. I got so thin, so gaunt yet we still weren’t happy.

Now I am trying to be healthy and the changes in my body wrack my brain and I am fighting myself and my own hormonal changes. I want to be healthy now, yet the engraved image of “beauty” you left behind, it sears me.

Is it healthy? Is it goals? Or is it a sickness within me? I find myself trying to embrace my body, yet struggling not to clutch at it rather too forcefully, this body has done amazing things, if only my eyes could see.

See that I am worthy of more than what the past has projected on me, what if I eat what I want? What if i love my body without judging it by a scale? What if I stop counting micros and macros like you taught me???

~Audberry~

[audberry]

Just a Seedling

You tried to bury me,

in the dirt,

pulled it heavy over my eyes,

Thick and cold like your lies.

Yet I guess you forgot as you invalidated me,

Pushed me down,

Forgot;

about the seedling,

That grows even without light,

In that cold my sense of self took root.

Unsure of where to go,

Where to expand to,

with eyes blinded,

In the heavy blackness of you,

Yet no matter the cold,

I strive for a way out!

I’m calling out my own name now.

I will find me here,

In this desolate barren scape,

Pressing against the bones,

And cold bodies of your long dead lovers,

Different versions of who once was I.

But darling you forgot about that little seedling.

I call out my name now,

Striving toward the light,

I will find “you”...

In so doing I will find me,

Pressing through this dirt,

Darling you can keep the bodies,

Because I have found me,

And I am done finally with you.

Because,

Darling I found me,

I broke through,

no matter the thickness of lies you spoke,

I was able to push past the blankets of self reflected dreams and remember,

Remember me!

~Audberry~